hypotension and 5 patients had pruritus. Thus both groups were comparable regarding complications (p value >0.05). We did not observe arrhythmia, urinary retention and respiratory depression in any of the patient in both groups.(Table 4)

Discussion:

Epidural anaesthesia provides excellent pain relief with early mobilization of patients particularly when a local anaesthetic agent is combined with an adjuvant like opioids. The addition of adjuvants in epidural anaesthesia accelerates the onset of sensory blockade but also decreases the effective dose of local anaesthetic agent. The synergistic effect between local anaesthetic agent and opioids is well established for epidural anaesthesia.[1],[9]

Bupivacaine is associated with a number of side effects like unwanted motor blockade, neurotoxicity and cardiotoxicity which may cause death due to its cardiotoxicity after accidental intravenous injection and warrants continued search for new and safer local anaesthetic agent. Levobupivacaine have been developed as an alternative to bupivacaine after the evidence of its cardiotoxicity and it seems to have less toxic effects on cardiovascular and central nervous system.[10]

The mean time of onset of sensory and motor block was statistically not significant between the two groups, (p>0.05). The previous studies have demonstrated that levobupivacaine and bupivacaine wer